Nobody remembers this one because it arrived at the exact moment anime stopped caring about fairy tales. Each episode is a complete story with its own animation team, tone, and stakes. You get the actual Grimm, not the Disney version, the ones where the cost of magic is paid in blood, where wishes destroy as often as they save. It's a time capsule of when adapting classic literature meant respecting the source material enough to let it be dark. For viewers who grew up on this, those 26 episodes are proof that European folklore was never just for children.

Each episode brings a new story drawn from classic Western fairy tales and literature. The sources include the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift, Alexandre Dumas, L. Frank Baum, Johanna Spyri and the tales of 1001 Nights. Most adaptations stay faithful to the original texts, though some sad endings are softened and stories are trimmed to fit a half-hour slot. Of the 26 stories in this fantasy anthology, 21 aired on television and the final five came out on VHS.